If you have ever lost one of your Switch 1 Joy-Con, there's every chance that you will have seen the 'Search for Controllers' feature in action. This menu in the 'Controller' settings lets you select any paired controller that you know is in the room somewhere, and make it vibrate, so you can track it down in a pocket, down the back of the sofa, or accidentally left in the fridge when you got up to grab a mid-game snack.
Switch 2 boasts a similar feature, but, with the introduction of HD Rumble 2, it makes the controllers even easier to track down. That's because the new Joy-Con can now output sound at a pretty impressive volume, all through the magic of vibrations.
As showcased in a recent post on the Nintendo Today! app (and shared to BlueSky by @Stealth40k), the Joy-Con 2's sound output capabilities appear to have seen a substantial bump from its predecessor. In the following 'Search for Controllers' showcase, it seems HD Rumble 2 is now capable of emitting loud enough beeps and boops that no controller will stay hidden for long.
Heck, the sound output highlighted in the video is so loud that it almost sounds like the Joy-Con 2 are fitted with a tiny speaker. We're sure Nintendo would have mentioned such an addition if a speaker had been added to the new controllers — did someone say 'bonus Welcome Tour level'? — so we're pretty confident that what we're hearing is a rather impressive display of HD Rumble 2's capabilities instead.
Of course, this isn't the first time that we have seen HD Rumble used for musical purposes. If you recall some of the more theatrical stages in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, you might remember the Joy-Con would 'sing' along as you stepped on musical notes, producing a tiny scale as you walked.
But even at its loudest, we never heard 'HD Rumble 1' (is that a thing?) produce anything quite this loud. A message on the Nintendo website previously informed us that the new console's HD Rumble won't be as loud as it was on Switch 1, but that seemingly doesn't apply to tracking down any Joy-Con that have gone walkabout.
All this might differ in the real world, where the wonders of video editing can't make the environment completely silent and the HD-Rumble 2 completely clear, but it certainly seems to be a step up.
Sound output aside, the Joy-Con 2's HD Rumble was one of the features we were the most impressed with when we went hands-on with Switch 2 last month. It might not have quite the same shock value as it did when we first sampled it on Switch 1, but we're picking up good vibrations nonetheless.